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This Romulan commander served aboard the Narada and was in command of the bridge when Nero and Ayel hunted James T. Kirk down. When Nero returned to the bridge he informed him about Spock's actions. (Star Trek)

These Romulans served as crewmembers aboard the Narada under the command of Nero. (Star Trek)

Beside three credited actors all other crewmembers were played by background and stunt performers. The Romulan played by Joe Quinto spoke no lines during the shooting of the film, but the character was given dialogue in post-production. This dialogue was spoken by Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame.

These two Romulans guarded the drill platform while in orbit of Vulcan. They defended the drilling rig from James T. Kirk and Hikaru Sulu who landed on the rig. The first Romulan fought against Kirk until Sulu landed on the rig and attacked him with his retractable sword. He was killed by a burst of flame from a vent after Sulu kicked him towards the vent seconds before it opened again. The second Romulan wrestled Kirk and threw him off the edge of the platform, but Kirk was able to hang onto the edge, kilometers above the surface of Vulcan. The Romulan tried to stomp Kirk's hands to force him to release his grip, but was stabbed by Sulu from behind and then fell off the platform himself. (Star Trek)

Originally, Neville Page was tasked with imagining how the Narada crew might look different from other Romulans, given that the crew members were separate from the Romulan Empire with which they were familiar. It was Page who conceived the idea of using tattoos to differentiate the Narada personnel, thinking up the concept at that point. He later apologized to the body art community for taking advantage of the widely held misconception that facial tattoos indicate that a person is dangerous.

About the same time as Neville Page decided upon using tattoos for the Romulan crew, it was imagined that – even though it was Romulan tradition to commemorate a loved one by skin-painting with paint that faded along with the period of mourning – the Narada crew had burned their tattoos deep, so that they would never fade. This back-story had to be planned before Page could make a start on the actual designing of the tattoos. [1] He designed the tribal-looking patterns digitally. (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 37) Once he worked out how Nero's tattoos would look, Page was left with hundreds of tattoo configurations which, having been discarded for Nero, were consequently available to use for the rest of his crew.

Once the tattoo designs had been finalized, the application of the patterns was the next step. Drawing or painting them onto each performer's face were not endorsed methods. [2] Instead, the tattoos were chosen to be "a transfer process, like you'd find at an amusement park, only much more expensive," explained Neville Page. Sheets of paper showing his tattoo artwork were dispatched to Tinsley Transfers, which used the images to produce, Page estimated, a couple of hundred tattoos. (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 37) The usage of these printed sheets of rub-on images saved the makeup artists hours of work and helped to ensure consistency. With the tattoos for the Narada personnel having to be appear aged, Mindy Hall, head of the makeup department, chose an appropriate color for the ink to be used for the Tinsley Transfers. [3]

The tattoos were added to the performers playing the Narada crew members by Joel Harlow Designs. The addition of the tattoos was the final stage in making the actors look Romulan. However, ensuring that each tattoo completely conformed to a performer's face was a laborious procedure. It was done by digitally adjusting the various tattoo configurations and testing them on lifecasts, which had been manufactured when creation of the Romulan facial appearances began. (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 37)

Costume Designer Michael Kaplan decided how the Romulan crew were dressed in the movie. "I wanted the Romulans to look more like workers than cerebral Vulcans," he recalled, "to have a feeling of being pirates and barbarians. Their costumes were patchworks of different fabrics, like they've been stitched over and repaired." (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 41) Kaplan also contrasted the Romulan crew to the Vulcans by saying, "There was much more rough and organic feeling to the Romulans. That barbaric feeling that I wanted them to have, more warlike." ("Props & Costumes", Star Trek (Three disc Blu-ray))

The ruggedness of the Romulan crew informed their style of fighting, about which J.J. Abrams had a long discussion with Ayel actor Clifton Collins Jr.. Collins later observed, "These guys are very strong, very thuggish and very powerful. Their style of fighting wouldn't be a finesse-ful savat, or an aikido type of thing: they're like brutal space cavemen. The style is something that accommodates that body structure." (Star Trek Magazine issue 146, p. 28)